Category: Cyprus

I live in Cyprus for many years now. It is a beautiful little island in Mediterranean Sea. It features warm weather for most of the year, sea, very kind and hospital people, plenty of jobs in IT industry, good food and plenty of alcohol, stable currency, and more. It’s really a nice place to live if you can handle small towns and villages. It’s also a great place to raise the kids.

Not much happens here. It is a quiet and simple place. Yet, when something happens or when I write about it, I post it to Cyprus category.

Cyprus web sites observation

Cyprus web sites seem to be very sensitive about the weather.  Most of the web sites have an “About Cyprus” page, which often says something along the lines of “Cyprus has more than 300 sunny days a year“.  I do agree that Cyprus is pretty well covered with sunlight through out the year, but I wouldn’t go to any exact number of days.  Whatever.  That thing is just marketing.

But then, most of the same web sites have a weather forecast widget somewhere on sidebar.  What?  What for do you need one?  If it’s 300+ sunny days a year, the question of “What weather is it going to be today (or tomorrow)?” is not one of the frequently asked, is it?  It’s like asking “Is it going to rain today?” in UK.  The answer is always “Yes”.

And then, if you look closely on those weather forecast widgets and actually count the number of sunny days, you’ll get … what will you get?

Born again Quaker

I am back in Quake 3.  It all happened very fast and very unexpected.  I used to play Quake 3 about five years ago, and I have to tell you, we had plenty of fun back then.  But one thing led to another and I dropped out.  I haven’t heard anything about Quake 3, haven’t watched any demos, or haven’t even talked about Quake 3 in the last 5 years or so.

A few days ago I noticed a colleague of mine spending his lunch break chasing someone in pro-q3dm6 map.  I got a overwhelmed by a wave of memories and forgotten feelings and I asked him if I could play a round on his computer.  He agreed.  It turned out, he was playing against my own brother.  My brother, being a mean chap as he is, started playing Quake 3 too, with some guys from the college, but never pushed me to return.  Now that I was chased by him around the arena, I remembered that he mentioned his comeback once or twice.

Anyway, the quick match showed that my Quake 3 skills were gone.  All of them.  Even despite playing on somebody else’s computer, using half-baked configuration, and playing over 150+ ms ping, I still could feel how bad I am in the game.

In a quick chat after the game, my brother mentioned that my laptop should be fast enough to run Quake 3.  Of course, it’s not a gaming station by any means, but it should be sufficient to handle a game written a decade ago or so.  He was right.  I fetched a dusty CD-ROM and installed the game.  A quick Google search over my blog archives helped me to get back my old config file.  And I started practicing with the bots a bit.

Boy, was I ashamed.  Bots were killing me with any weapon on any map in any position on any level of difficulty.  It was almost unbelievable.  Everything was gone.  I couldn’t move. I couldn’t aim. I forgot the maps.  I forgot the controls.  My hands were getting tired after just a few minutes…  It was like I never played Quake 3 in my life, but worse.

Anyway, I got interested in getting back what I once had.  I was never by any means a top player or a particularly skillful one, but I could run around properly and kill a few people even.  I wanted my skills back.

It turned out I wasn’t the only one.  I quickly found another three or four people who wanted to play some proper Quake 3.  We played a few matches on our own server.  It was slow and laggy, but it felt good non-the-less.

I jumped on my connections to find out what happened to the old servers and old people that used to play.  Surprisingly, the server is still up, and there is another new one brought up just a couple of days ago, and there seem to be some interest – a few people play on a daily basis.  Wow!  That was much more than I hoped for.

Today I truly got back into Quake 3.  I played for three hours, and I played with some people who I haven’t seen for the last five years.  I was surprised to see that they remember me, and that they missed me and all that…  So, what have changed?  Here is a briefing:

  • There are more maps and mods than I can remember.
  • There are more servers around.  Back in the days we had like one or two servers with all proper maps and patches.  Now I have four servers in my bookmarks.  And most of them are faster and richer than those that we used to play on.
  • People are more interested in the game.  Five years ago, Quake 3 in Cyprus was more of a fashion game.  Most kids were playing Counter Strike, and Quake 3 was sort of a “change of environment”.  Not many understood it, not many liked it, but many tried it.  With this, a lot of people were passing by.  Now, Quake 3 is a classic game.  Many games have been made since it was released, and most players moved on.  Only those die-hard fans are still around.  And some new blood, people who want to learn the proper game.

A few things changed.  But the main one is still there.  Quake 3 is still a lot of fun.   The years that passed by, the new technologies, the life changing experiences that happened, none of these changed the my attitude towards Quake 3.  And I feel that I am not alone… and it feels like Quake 3 is not just a game, but a lifestyle.

You will probably hear more about my Quake 3 adventures on this blog in the near future.  Until then, happy fragging!

Three things to like about WikiMapia

Here are three things that I like about WikiMapia :

  1.  It’s brings together the excellence of Google Maps and the social power of Wiki.  The results are better than anywhere else.  Even Cyprus, which usually gets little attention on the web, is covered pretty good.
  2. It’s easy to add landmarks and notes.  That’s something I really missed so far on Google Maps, where I can just see maps and search for geographical locations.  With WikiMapia, I can find something, mark it down with the notes, and then send the link to somebody else.  I won’t need to provide the instructions like “find two major roads crossing at the bottom of this map and then follow the one that goes up until second turn on the right. You’ll see a sort of triangular white building.  That’s our office” any more.  Just a link.
  3. WikiMapia pages score pretty good in  Google search results (I hope it doesn’t sound like invitation to spammers).  To find map to our offices now all I need to do is search for brief company name – “mmvirtual“.  The map link is the second result after our own web site.

Guest of the year: CVN-69

CVN-69

Cyprus has become a nuclear nation for the last few days. But don’t get too worried just yet. There aren no known nuclear terrorists around here, no nuclear weapons, and we aren’t building any nuclear power stations.

We have a guest. The Guest, I better say. Here are a few quotes from the Wikipedia page to get you introduced:

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVAN-69/CVN-69), nicknamed “Ike”, is the second of 10 Nimitz-class supercarriers in the United States Navy.

She was laid down as hull number 599 on 15 August 1970 at Newport News shipyard at a cost of $679 million, launched 11 October 1975 after christening by Mamie Doud-Eisenhower, and commissioned 18 October 1977

stayed on station off the coast of Iran for over 8 months, and was at sea for a total of 254 days

At one point, she spent 152 days (or 5 ½ months) at sea without a port call, a new record.

The ship is not that far from the coast. She is best viewed from Molos promenade. If you want to make pictures, make sure to check time (sun) and weather (mist, sun). I’ve made two attempts today, but both not very successful. I’ll try to make some more pictures tomorrow. All images will be posted to this Flickr set.

For the last couple of days I wasn reading a lot about this beauty. It is one piece of technology, I’ll tell you that. If I were to describe it in one word – “magnificent” is my choice. Truly. Any characteristic I checked about it – from the number of carried aircfats and the crew size to nuclear reactors and strategic potential – makes me go WOW! If you’re not amazed by the technology, try the money side of the story. Building costs, maintenance costs, repairs – you’ll have to count all zeros carefully.

Beautiful, beautiful gadget.

P.S.: This post is a part of a group blogging effort.

PrimeTel’s PrimeHome Triple Play

Today I became a happy owner of PrimeTel PrimeHome installation, also known as Triple Play. Triple Play is this new way of bundling together loads of television channels, ADSL Internet connection, and really cheap telephony. It’s said to cost only 25 CYP month, but I got lucky and received a promotion offer of free installation and 3 month of service free of charge as well.

I didn’t have any time to play with it just yet, but it looks quite good. Here are the things that I’ve noticed during my short experience:

  • Television has an electronic TV guide with a time schedule for all programs for all channels. This is very handy.
  • Internet connection was way to easy to install. Just plugged the Ethernet cable straight into my laptop and I was done.
  • Sound quality in the telephone is a bit less than CYTA’s. There is some minor background noise all the time. But it’s not as bad as it can sound.
  • Switching channels on TV is a lot slower than before. This will need some getting used to. But it’s a fair trade for not having to configure any of the channels, crispy clear quality of image and sound, TV guide, and the selection of channels.

I’ll probably post more about it later, when I’d played more with it, but don’t hold your breath on that one.

P.S.: I might be somewhat biased being an employee of PrimeTel Ltd., and having received the package free of charge (installation + 3 month). Take my words with a grain of salt. And pepper.